Your Stephen Sink Saturday Fractal Animation Music Video (FAMV) is Sisyphus' Rock, featuring "Real Good Time: Solo Piano + Piano Solo." (I really need to get this cooking on Fridays, to make "Friday Fractals"--makes note to self).

Music: This is just the backing piano rhythm track to a much larger, complex rock opera of a song, called "Real Good Time." It was my very first single release with me singing, and I'll post it at the very bottom of this just because I love it, even though I now see lots of warts that I'd redo differently. I took the backing piano and added the piano solo from the song together to make "Real Good Time: Solo Piano + Piano Solo." It is also a track off my last piano-only album called "Paigan Productions Presents: Piano Pieces."

This song is in 3, which you should notice right away, but a surprising number of people (non-musicians of course) don't notice it until I point it out. I was trying to create a drinking song, and was going for a timeless, folksy feel of a pub anthem to be sung in unison by a mob of hard-drinking young lads and lassies (that was the image in my mind for the song). Somehow, the waltzy 3-feel lent itself well to the drinking song feel, until the rock opera spiraled out far from the drinking song it started out as. By the way, I stopped drinking as a competitive sport (or really at all) one year ago this month!

Song is A minor, with very basic chords to make a folk-song "easy" tonality. The chords are Amin, C, Dmin, and F and G (with 7ths of those chords here and there).

Video: This was done on the graphics card (GPU) rather than the render farm (CPU). The base fractal algorithms here are Julia Sets of the basic Mandelbox fractal, morphing a big simple square through all three axis (Axii?) simultaneously, until interesting things happen. The tension between the competing morph lines allows a wide range of polymorphic shapes, from the basic square, to more elaborate latticed cubes, to a quantum foam of fractal goodness and bubbly brain matter.

If there's jargon and terminology in this nascent, beginning fractal animation field, I'm not aware of it. My apologies to anyone who studied 12-dimensional higher mathematics and geometry or who just knows the names for basic fractal shapes. So my terms as as good (for me, and for you!) as any, unless you have better (please share!). I just make them up as I need to.*

*Just like I invented "Light" and "Dark" chords when I first started teaching myself piano and music theory. Don't tell little Stevie Skywalker, but the rest of the world calls that "major" and "minor." (I still like my teenage terms, if we ever want to change...The tritone was the "Emperor's Interval" instead of the Devil's, so I got real close on naming that one--sorry John Williams!)

This field, much like the Chapman Stick, is vastly unexplored territory (he says, ignoring the millions [1000s] of Indians already living here in Stickland for over a generation now!). I see a few other people doing this a little bit, and I love when they do something very cool with a feature of the program that I've been wondering "What does THAT do? Tweak, tweak, tweak... Oh, so THAT's what the volumetric rays of God light thingy is!" Just watching other people's videos lets me see the possibilities I could be exploring. It's exactly the same here watching you all do your own unique things on your various Sticks. "Oh--you CAN play classical on this thing same as any keyboard--but 4ths are better?" That kind of thing.

Your feedback, comments, suggestions, impressions, and random fractal segues are always appreciated!

Steve Sink, Paigan Productions

YouTube:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq0WNGDj6p4[/youtube]

Vimeo link, better quality and downloads:
https://vimeo.com/154403599

SoundCloud audio only:


SoundCloud Link to original rock opera, Real Good Time (Extended Version):

Wow, great mood in that song! Loved it! Thanks Stephen!


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Oh wow, that's crazy! The tune is great, but the visuals take it to another place entirely. Cool.

I absolutely love the chord progression. I also dig how you sometimes let the lower notes rumble. It's powerful.

Thanks guys, for the comments! Rodrigo, Scott--I appreciate you listening and commenting! The mood was supposed to be as welcoming and downhome as a drinking song can be--but that was really vague and nebulous to start from. The mood was job one and the 3/4 feel helps me keep a waltz in my head at all times. Is it possible to dance a waltz and still be down or depressed? It's hard to do, at least for me. But then I stuck it with a minor key, because nothing says drinking song like crying into your cups. I get the contradiction there.

And I really dug the visuals on this one too. I'm actually finishing a video taken from this one with the best parts lengthened and accentuated to go with the actual slightly longer rock opera version of "Real Good Time." That'll be next Saturday!

The piano solo actually has some wicked (for me) two-handed counterpoint going, that I had to doubletrack over the backing piano rhythm, because you can't double voicings on piano the way you can on Stick. No redundant notes on piano. But then--show me a Stick gliss (glissando). That's why I play them all! MWAH HAH HAH!!!

Larry, thanks so much! It's not a complicated chord progression but I love it too! As soon as I had the chord voicings, I had my patented and trademarked expression "Damn!" when I like something. Damn! I love that progression, too! The melody just sprang directly from it. It's why I love chord inversions so much.

As for the bass, I'm actually layering on 3 different piano's sounds (maybe 4 or 5, I forget now) by just quintupling the piano line and sending it out to different MIDI piano sample banks--each chosen for it's particular sweet spot at certain frequency ranges--that are then blended together at final mix. I'm pushing the loudness levels too which I stole from Elton John's live sound (I always think--"it that really how hot his piano is miked?") until I can actually hear the damper pedal being raised and lowered on the really deep stuff. I'm just amusing myself on that one but it definitely makes me happy that that was musically pleasing to you. Powerful? Now that's what I'm shooting for! Sweet, thanks!

My personal choice for folk anthem of all time is the one that sports has appropriated from Jack White that has such pure majestic, riffy power: the bassline to 7-Nation Army. Here's Jack White teaching it to Jimmy Page and The Edge (you're welcome--there's no way on Earth that 98% of us don't think this is the coolest thing ever. The other 2%--have ye no soul, my brother?) Thanks, guys! This one's for you:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwhutKZAEk[/youtube]

You can't just watch that without picking up your own instrument and trying. Here's the full thing:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2QdDbelmY[/youtube]

I'm going to have to Kanye my own post about rock anthems and beg your forgiveness for forgetting about Queen. I'll go home now in shame.

Love the epic, uplifting feel.

I dug it

Thanks, Alan!

Here is where I step it up a notch on the fractal generating. I bought an HP Blade Enclosure for basically shipping and two blade servers to go in it (64 cores total) for around $500. Each blade is the equivalent to a good i7 computer, and I can add additional ones for about $150 a piece. It will hold 16 but has two split buses for power, and two separate admin modules (included), so I don't anticipate ever wanting to or needing to install more than eight total (or paying for that much power).

Front view (2 blade servers installed)
Rear view


I'm aware that Amazon and other cloud services are a solution, but this seemed too handy to pass up. I'll let you know when it's fired up (I'm waiting for some additional power cords and a PDU (Power Distribution Unit). I'm also waiting before buying any additional blades until I verify that it's all working.

Insert Tim Allen MAN GRUNT!!!!! Good times.

Steve

Lol, I tried to record something cool, but sadly it wasn't! Good thing your tune is here haha